Behind Photographs: Photographers Posing with their Most Famous Photos

Photographer Tim Mantoani started a personal project in 2006 capturing photographers and their most famous photos. You might have shared one of these impressive photos on social media, but do you know who took them?

Today, when Tim’s not shooting on assignment, he’s documenting venerable lens men who have collectively captured decades of culture and celebrities with their own cameras. Legendary rock photographers Jim Marshall and Michael Zagaris have sat for 20 x 24-inch Polaroid portraits, as have Walter Iooss, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Pete Turner, Elliott Erwitt, Mary Ellen Mark and Roberto Salas. Tim’s enthusiasm for the medium of photography is undiminished by the changes he’s seen during his career. For him, it’s not work so much as a mission. He sees the story in each face, in each place; and lives to give them a voice through his work.

His project has been collated into a book, Behind Photographs Archiving Photographic Legends, which is available for purchase here.

Steve McCurry: Peshawar, Pakistan 1984. I looked for this girl for 17 years and finally found her in 2002. Her name is Sharbat Gula.

Jeff Widener – Beijing 1989

Harry Benson: Brian Epstein – Beatles Manager – had just told them they were number one in America – and I was coming with them to New York. 1964

Lyle Owerko: No one knew such beautiful warm day would serve as the backdrop to one of the most painful and confusing events to the heart of mankind. This picture is one small part of such a huge event that ties the threads of thousands of stories and millions of people together. Written words will never convey the whole scope of the event, nor summarize the sounds, the smells or even voices that are frozen in my memory bank from that day. I did the best job I could in photographing the 9/11 so that future generations would have the idea of the scope of what happened, to have the evidence how innocence can so easily be snatched away in a razor’s edged moment in time. My hope is that in time the wounds and pain will heal and that wisdom and peace will prevail among the darkness of this event, so that humanity could move forward into a time of grace and understanding.

Marry Elen Mark: I am holding my photograph of Ram Prakash Singh and his beloved elephant Shyama – taken in 1990. Ram Prakash Singh was the ringmaster of “The Great Golden Circus” – this photograph was done in Ahmedabad, India – This was part of my Indian Circus Project. I love India and I love the circus, so photographing eighteen circuses all around India was an incredible experience. Unfortunately Shyama died a few months after this photograph was taken supposedly he succumbed to poisoned chapatti. Ram Prakash Singh was heartbroken me also.

Thomas Mangelsen: Brown bear, Brooks Falls Katmai National Park, Alaska. July 1988. I pre visualized this possibility (of an image like this) from watching documentary films about the bears at Katmai and seeing a photograph in Alaska Air Magazine of a group of bears here at the falls. At the time, I was on a flight to Anchorage working on a documentary film about Sandhill Cranes and had a week between shoots. I phoned the park headquarters from the airport in Achorage and asked about getting a campsite. They said they were all full – ecept for one site, that was near the bear trail and nobody wanted it. I told them I would take it. I spent a week on a small platform above the falls trying to captures this image. I would go most days before sunrise and stay until dark. During that time I shot 35 rolls of film of pretty much just head + shoulders of bears + sockeye salmon leaping the falls. Six weeks later I opened the yellow box to see this image. It was a nice surprise. I hadn’t known that I got it.

David Doubilet: Circle of Barracuda, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The school of chevron barracudas circled the diver three times and pow they were gone into a dark afternoon sea. The oceans of the world have no straight lines; geometry like a perfect circle is a rare thing, but these barracudas will do this as a defense. 70% of our planet is an ocean. It is a place of infinite hidden beauty. It is a place where light behaves in a very different manner. Global warming/ climate change is about water. Coral reefs where I have spent most of my life are very threatened now—not just from rising temperatures but from the change in ocean chemistry = This is a world where my partner Jennifer Hayes and I go into. It is most of our planet. A world without corners that may be gone by the end of the century.

May Pang: Summer 1974 Long Island Sound NY. A relaxing time with his son Julian. I called this photo “Family Portrait”

Neil Leifer: Ali vs. Liston – May 25, 1965, Lewiston, Mayne

Vincent Laforet: I’ve been fortunate enough to witness some pretty amazing things in my relatively young career that began twenty years ago. Many were beautiful, others were horrifuing; most were important moments in history every event big or small is important. One of the interesting things that I’ve learned through aerial photography is that taking a sep backwards (or in this case 1,500 feet up) ironically often forces the view to become much more intimae with the image as they study it in much greater detail, and are forced to let their imagination take over. “Me and my human” Central Park, NYC

Bob Gruen: John Lennon asked me to come to his pentouse apt on the east side of New York to take pictures for the cover of his ‘Walls + Bridges’ album. After we took a series of portraits for the record cover we took some informal shots to use for publicity. I asked him if he still had the New York City t-shirt I had given him a year earlier and he went a put it on and we made this photo.

Elliott Erwitt: The picture I am holding was snapped in 1974 just across the street from my apartment in New York’s Central Park. It has been 38 years since that event and sadly I have lost track of the participants.

Herman Leonard: It was early 1948 at the Royal Roost in New York. An afternoon rehearsal game me a unique opportunity to photograph many giants of jazz with my trusty 4×5 Speed Graphic. What a great career! To do what you love and be entertained at the same time!

Lori Grinker: Mike Tyson – 1980, age 14. I began a project on young boxers when I was a student. The legendary Cus D’Amato told me Mike would be the next great heavy weight champion, he was right – and I continued on with him for nearly a decade. He was a trouble but sweet kid who veered off the good path he was let to with all that comes with being a celebrity in that world.